It is often advantageous to deploy sensors to provide information to facility security personnel or to gain intelligence about a remote site. Sensors are relatively cheap (compared to personnel) and can provide a variety of reliable information. There are drawbacks to current sensor deployments, however. The sensors used are simple and often unable to distinguish between significant events and false detections triggered by insignificant nuisance events. If more sophisticated sensors are deployed, they require expert analysis to interpret their results. Further, sensors are single domain: a microphone hears sounds, a camera sees visible light, and a motion detector responds to movement. Sensors are also prone to false alarms.
One way to respond to these failings is to deploy multiple sensor types and use the combined sensor evidence to perform a situation assessment. Current state of the art tries to accomplish this either by co-locating individual sensor systems resulting in numerous monitors for an operator to view and respond to, or by displaying multiple individual sensor systems on a common display. These strategies are inadequate because they rely on an (often poorly trained and unknowledgeable) operator to determine what happened based on the sensor outputs which may be many and conflicting. In most security situations, the only effective method is to install numerous cameras and require the operator to visually confirm all sensor alarms. Sensors are used as cues for the cameras. This strategy is adequate for conventional threats in a facility of sufficient priority to justify the expense of the cameras, but is inappropriate for less critical facilities and not feasible for monitoring remote sites.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a method and device for detecting the occurrence of an event by associating detection outputs from a plurality of different detection devices into a single event and characterizing the event based upon all detection information.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for event detection utilizing all data from many different types of sensors to perform an event analysis.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a method for identifying and characterizing events based upon a multiplicity of sensor inputs which uses event identifiers and location information to determine association of events into objects. Associated sensor detections are combined into a single event identified and characterized by all sensor outputs thereby reducing false alarms.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by providing a method and device for obtaining information from a plurality of different types of sensors including photo or video data as well as raw sensor measurements. These sensor detections, including the photo or video data, are associated to create events, each of which is characterized and annunciated to an operator. Events are associated into objects/processes using all available information to allow longer term analysis of operations and determine trends. The present invention does not rely on structure for event identifiers, can optionally use location information, and can use operational time patterns for object fusion. Thus, the invention uses all available information for fusion from events into objects and can use each type of information in an optimal manner for each situation.
The method and device of the present invention provides:
1. Capability to automatically associate sensor detections into events (create an event view).
2. Capability to use all types of sensor information, including raw measurements, extracted features, and all types of existing sensor provided information.
3. Capability to identify the events based on all the sensor evidence (which may reduce false alarms and nuisance alarms).
4. Capability to characterize the event and annunciate to an operator in a variety of ways (calculate event information based on the type of event and provide automated response as desired.
5. Capability to associate events into objects/processes using all available information in the most appropriate manner.